


Maybe some things are inevitable

by Florchis



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Dialogue, Episode: s01e22 Beginning of the End, F/M, POV Leo Fitz, The FitzSimmons Network, Time Vortex, fitzsimmonssecretvalentine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-02-17
Packaged: 2018-09-25 02:26:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9798368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Florchis/pseuds/Florchis
Summary: When the pod falls into the ocean, they start seeing... strange things, to say the least.Some of those visions might create issues between them, but some others might help them get what they want: surviving, and each other.[Written for The Fitzsimmons Network Secret Valentine Exchange]





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [expecto_cosmos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/expecto_cosmos/gifts).



> Hello expecto_cosmos, I'm your Secret Valentine!! It's been lovely writting to you this past few weeks, and I love seeing you in my dash. I hope you like your gift! This just ended being a fluffier version of the pod. I don’t know. I’m not very happy with this, but I really tried my best. This uses quite a lot of dialogue from canon, so that belongs to the Powers That Be.  
> Prompt: Instead of the pod falling into the ocean it falls into a time travel vortex (they see both past and future)

After Ward pulls the lever, everything is a rush of things happening all at once.

It’s maddening, because Fitz sees everything that is happening but slowed down, like a movie played frame by frame. But _he_ is also slowed down, his brain-muscles connection is compromised and he can only watch hell breaking loose petrified on his spot. But gravity is too strong, gravity is that force that can not be ignored, can not be broken, and in what could be milliseconds or centuries, Fitz is not sure, they are falling, falling, falling, falling, and Fitz loses his privileged sit to watch the tragedy unwrapping around them.

And then Jemma hits her head and falls unconscious. Maybe because no one is watching him he can do the kind of things that are too unbelievable to do in front of other people. Or maybe he could do everything because that’s the moment he realizes that it’s not only his life on the line, it’s Jemma’s too. He doesn’t have a rational explanation, only maybe some theories, but that’s not what it is important. The important thing is that he manages to get a hold on Jemma’s limp body and somehow strap them both to one of the backboards, just in time to hear and feel the pod hitting the ocean.

The first thing he does after the impact is, of course, check Jemma’s pulse. It’s weak, but it’s there, and that will have to do for the time being. He doesn’t have time to congratulate himself on a job well done, because, first, he hit his arm badly sometime during this endeavour, and, second, the pod is _fucking sinking_ _._ Fitz can only watch the water rise on the window of the pod, transfixed. The pain is overwhelming, the fear is all-consuming, but for a couple of minutes the only thing he can do is watch how they are both dragged to certain death. He should have known better; with his luck, there was no way he could save them both from a horrible fate: if he had avoided one crisis, there had to be a worse one waiting for them.

When they hit the bottom of the ocean, Fitz decides that he doesn’t have time to panic: either they will make it out of this alive or they won’t, and fear- even if a natural reaction to trigger self-preservation- won’t help him. He has to let his analytical mind take over, and if you have a ginormous task that you think you can't overcome, there is only two things you can do to solve it: sleep on it or try to break it into smaller, more manageable parts. He will left the sleeping option to Jemma, he has to do the small things that will help him fix the big problem and that means that, first, he needs to take care of his arm. It’s broken on the same two places he broke it on second grade, which is a little odd, but not so much: if his arm was meant to be broken somewhere, it only makes sense that it would happen on its weaker points (he pretends he doesn’t notice the connection between that logic and himself, Ward, the team, Simmons, Simmons, _Simmons,_ because he doesn’t have the time nor the energy right now for stabbing himself in the heart).  

It’s good, all things considered, that they are on a med pod, Fitz thinks while he searches for a sling. He can’t do much more on his own besides restricting his freedom of movement: he lacks Jemma’s medical knowledge and he he is not going to wake her up just yet, not until he has something reassembling an assessment of their situation and, if he’s lucky, even a possible solution. He is going through the boxes, slowly with just one hand available, but surely, when he sees something much more odd than his arm breaking again on the same two places.         

He is hallucinating. He hit his head without noticing, or maybe it’s the shock, and now his brain is playing tricks on him by showing him delusional images. It has to be something like that, and maybe he should wake up Jemma- _his_ Jemma, the _real_ Jemma, the one who is lying still on the pod’s floor- so she can check him for a concussion, because there is no logical explanation as to why or how he is peering outside the window and instead of the barely-lightened bottom of the ocean he is seeing Jemma, cheerful as ever, with a look that is not quite right for her face and entering a pristine, unknown lab. He is mesmerized, glued to the window, unable to torn his eyes apart, but he has to be seeing things (as in _my brain is fucking with me and my sense of reality_ things) because, on the bottom wall of that lab, there is a black octopus.

The sight of Jemma Simmons in a Hydra lab manages to do what a fall from a plane, a broken arm and the certainty of coming death couldn’t achieve: maybe it is the shock, maybe it is the pain, maybe it is the panic (does it matter, anyway?), and Leopold Fitz passes out with his broken arm still unfastened.   

* * *

He wakes up to soft hands on his cheeks, and his first instinct is to nuzzle back against them, because it’s not the first time he has woken up like this- nor will it be the last, hopefully-, and a man can not be expected to fight eleven years of friendship and six months of worshipping infatuation with his eyes still closed. But then he feels the hard floor under his back, and he realizes where he is, and everything comes back to him in a flash, including why he passed out.

He tries to put as much distance as possible between him and her, and in his haste he ends up achieving little and being more undignified than he expected. He winces from the pain the movement rekindled on his arm. His heart is beating so fast he thinks it’s a miracle it hasn’t pierced his skin (yet), or that she can’t see it through his clothes (yet). There is hurt and surprise and bewilderment, all at once, in Jemma’s eyes, and she has _no right_ to look at him like that.

“You promised!”

“What?” She seems genuinely shocked, and he remembers that, even though sometimes it feels like they are physically linked, they are not, and she can not know what he is talking about out of the blue.

“You promised me you weren’t Hydra!”

Her lips start trembling, and that’s not fair, he can _not_ endure her crying, even if she is a _backstabbing nazi!_

“Fitz. I said it once and I meant it. I’m not Hydra.”

He doesn’t have much to say to uphold his argument without telling her about his hallucination, so he deviates the focus, even if it’s to a flimsy excuse.

“What were you doing right next to me when I woke up? How do I know that you weren’t trying to kill me?”

Jemma seems more confused than hurt, and raises her hands in the air, Fitz doesn’t know if she is trying to convey her indignation or trying to prove that she is actually harmless.

“I was checking on you! Your arm is broken, isn’t it?” It is, and he still hasn’t found a sling. He doesn’t answer. “What happened? And I mean how we survived and why we sank, but also why you are doubting me now.”

“I strapped us to one of the backboards before we hit the ocean, that’s why we didn’t snap our necks. And then we sank, because the pod is designed to be compatible with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s submarines too, which means that the walls of the pod react to the environment they encounter, and in contact with water, the walls increased their density.” He says it in a rush, and she nods multiple times, like she already knew what he is saying, and she just needed to be assured.

“Okay. Thank you for saving my life. I think I will be able to express more gratitude when you stop looking at me like I were _still_ infected with an alien virus. Now, onto with the Hydra issue.”

She’s too matter of fact and too calm for his liking, and he doesn’t know if he should allot it to her having the same cold-blood training than Ward or to her being completely honest. He is not going to take any risk, anyway, because he has _just_ been betrayed, and because, well, everything related to Simmons is a thousand times more important,  more potentially harmful, more like a death or life business.

“I just saw something.” He mutters under his breath. He is not too keen on explaining that maybe all this misunderstanding- god, _please_ be a misunderstanding- is due to a fool hallucination.

“Okay. What did you saw?”

“You. In a Hydra lab.”

She takes a sharp breath. He doesn’t know if it is because the image alone is too painful for her to bear or because she feels exposed. There are too many things _he_ _doesn’t bloody know,_ and that has always been a infuriating feeling for him.

“Where? Where do you saw that?”

He just points at the pod window, and she looks at it, her brows furrowed.

“Fitz, there is nothing there.”

This is turning more and more into a _you-are-crazy_ scenario instead of a _i’m-a-traitor_ scenario, and he doesn’t like it one bit (not that he would have liked the other one either).

“But I saw it!” He sounds like a child, and he doesn’t care. He knows that if she is a trained Hydra murderer, he doesn’t stand a chance against her (he probably wouldn’t stand a chance against her even if she isn’t a trained Hydra murderer). Having reached this point, the only thing he wants is the truth.

“I’m not trying to undermine your experience, I’m just stating a fact!” She closes her eyes and breathes, and he is sure that she must be counting to ten inside her head. “Okay, let’s do this. I would love to know that my word is enough for you, but I also understand that you are a scientist and you do better with arguments than with feelings. It’s very hard to prove something for the negative, and you know that. But we have to try. So, you tell me, why I can’t be an Hydra agent.”

Fitz is quiet for a long while, and the silence is unsettling because he can hear his own ragged breathing. Of course he knows all the reasons why Jemma can’t be an Hydra agent. He knows them, but that doesn’t mean that they are real, or  enough. But, okay, maybe saying them out loud with help him focus on them and think more clearly. Also, if he were only a waste of precious, limited oxygen, she could have killed him like a dozen times by now.

“Because Ward wouldn’t just discard you like you were worth nothing. He could just as easily spare you.”

She nods, and there is a small encouraging smile on her lips.

“Yes. Go on.”

“Also, I don’t know when you could have had the time to become a double agent, unless you have been one since the crib, because for the last ten years you have been by my side the whole damn time.”

He says it all in one exhalation and he just put his entire heart on than sentence; he wants it to be true so hard that, damn, he will _make_ it true. To be honest, they both are as good as toast anyway.

Jemma makes a tentative step towards him.

“Can I fix your arm now?”

She is everything he has left, and he is not proud, but _maybe_ he wants her more than he wants the truth.

“Yes, you can.”

* * *

It could be the fear, it could be the pain, it could be the oxygen that has to be running low, but he is pretty sure that what is making him feel dizzy is Jemma’s proximity. He can see every bit of her face from this distance, the worried tilt of her mouth, the blood in her forehead where she got hit when they were falling down, the focused look on her eyes. He feels like a volcano on the verge of exploding, _they are dying,_ they are as good as dead, actually, and she may or may not be a counterspy, but she still is his best friend and he loves her so much right now that it hurts more than any of his physical injuries.

“Your hair was shorter, you know.” He says it mostly to distract himself from the overpowering impulse of kissing her.

“What?”

“On my… hallucination, or vision, or whatever that was. Your hair was shorter. That was strange.”

“I had never had my hair short, Fitz.”

“I know.”

“Tell me about what you saw.”

So he tells her about the window, and the very white lab, and her strange way of presenting herself, and the Hydra logo. She gets pensive and quiet while he talks, and when she finishes securing his arm on the sling, she goes to the window and peers at it. And she gasps.

“Fitz. Come over here _right now.”_

He tries to go as fast as he can, because she is scaring him with her eyes big as saucers. And then she leans right next to her, and he sees it: the two of them, sitting on the floor of something that looks like a small, very dark bedroom, and there are bruises and cuts on their faces, but Jemma looks older, and his hair is shorter, and is that scruff on his face?

“Tell me you are seeing this too.”

“I am.”

“What are the odds of a collective hallucination, then?”

Jemma’s opening her mouth to answer, he is seeing it, he is sure she has not talked yet, but he still hears her voice.

_“I just want to help our friends.”_

And ocean-Jemma leaning her head on ocean-Fitz's shoulder and then the strangest thing happens, because Fitz can hear his own voice, and he cringes, because it's always strange to hear your own voice only by air-conduction and not also by bone-conduction.  

_“I know.”_

Did he say that hearing his own voice when he is not speaking is the strangest thing? He takes it back, he takes _everything_ back, because nothing, ever, will beat being right next to Jemma and at the same time watching them entwining their hands, and himself looking at her like his heart will beat out of his chest if he falls more in love with her, and then _kissing her._ Jemma- his Jemma, not the one his doppelganger is kissing- gasps, and Fitz takes a sharp breath, and everything is too much, there is too much air on his lungs, his brain has too many tabs open and he is sure he is about to pass up again. But then Jemma grabs his wrist, and her hand is cold and trembling slightly, and, okay, he can’t pass out now.

“What-”

But the question dies on her lips, because his doppelganger is breaking the kiss and there is no way _that_ is him, because hallucination or-, or time remnant, or whatever _the hell_ that is, it can’t be him, because there is no way on earth he would break up a kiss with Jemma Simmons when she is clearly kissing him back. He steals a glance at Jemma, to gauge her reaction, but she is just looking at the scene in front of their eyes with an unreadable look on her face.

_“Sorry. Uh. Sorry. I know everything with Will, and starting over. I didn’t mean to push too fast.”_

_“Too fast? Fitz, it’s been ten years. We can’t waste any more time.”_

_“Really? Cause I thought that-”_

_“Really! And since we’re cursed or whatever nonsense-”_

_“Oh, I said that one time-”_

_“-well, and you and your fourth dimensional idea-”_

_“-and for the record-”_

_“-that we can’t change fate.”_

_“-today is more evidence than the cosmos is against us.”_

And just like that, the scene vanishes and they are left watching the bottom of the ocean.

“What the actual _fuck.”_

Jemma is quiet, awfully quiet to be honest, and Fitz refuses to meet her eyes; he _needs_ to know what she is thinking, but at the same time he would give anything to not put what he needs to ask into articulated words.

“Did you-, um, did we-”

“Yeah. Yeah, I saw it too, Fitz.”

“What was that?” He throws a laugh in there just to hide his nerves, but it sounds terribly out of place.

“I have no clue.”

“Do you think we are actually dead? Or, or on the verge of dying and that’s why we are seeing things?”

Jemma pinches the back of her hand and then shows it to him as if it were proof enough.

“Too much pain to be dead. And I have read about collective hallucinations, mostly on religious settings, but I think this is too defined, too complex and too enclosed to be that.”

Fantastic. Not only they are stranded waiting for certain death and seeing strange things that defy all their scientific knowledge, also said visions are about things that made them both awfully uncomfortable. _Just peachy._

“Also, um, it was, very, um, very peculiar, don’t you think?”

“Seeing things on the bottom of the ocean when we are about to die? You don’t say, Simmons.”

“No. I mean, yes, of course. But I was talking mostly about the kiss.”

Is she blushing? Or is he just projecting himself on her? There are a million things he could say to her right now, tell her about how he almost went out of his mind when he thought he would lose her; tell her about the feelings that threaten to rip apart his ribcage and spill all over the floor, so much love and so much fear; tell her that her doppelganger was right, the years they have shared weren’t wasted, but there is so much more he wants to experience with her, so much he wants to share with her.

But he is a coward, and they might be doomed to die, but he is not dead yet, and something tells him that he wouldn’t be able to gather the courage to tell her unless he didn’t have to live with the consequences.

“Why don’t we try to find a way outta here? Let’s take a look at that window, shall we?”

* * *

“Well, the glass is bulletproof and pressure-resistant. Nothing we didn’t know.”

“And the flash point of the seal is too high for it to burn-”

“-and I did the math, and we’re at least 90 feet down. There is no way we could swim that distance without oxygen support.”

He knows that what he just said is as good as a death sentence. They look at each other for a long while, and Jemma is the first to drift her eyes apart.

“Let’s not forget about the… _strange_ things the ocean is deciding to show us.”

Why isn’t she letting it go? They are bound to start feeling the effects of low oxygenation any minute now (why haven’t they already started feeling them?) and there is no time to lose-

“Fitz? Is that our old lab?”

He turns around so fast that he gets dizzy, and she is right, they are looking straight at their old lab at SciOps, at her back and at his nervous face. Fitz recognizes the moment straight away, and he doesn’t need to see a rerun to remember each and every word like they have just happened five minutes ago, and everything is too painful and too confusing for him to bear it, so he closes his eyes.

_“How many times do I have to tell you to not leave the ethanol so close to the Bunsen burner? You know the golden rule: a tidy lab is a happy lab! And you also know that the ethanol has a too low flash po-”_

_“Simmons. I just signed up.”_

_“What?”_

_“I signed up for the field team you wanted to join.”_

_“Are you serious? But I thought that-”_

_“You want to go, and you are right, if we don’t do this while we are young, when would we? Besides, we might die soon from sun-deprivation if we don’t get out of this lab.”_

_“You are just going because I want to go.”_

_“Maybe a little? In full disclosure, I’m trusting your judgement. You being top of the class and everything, am I right?”_

_“... yes, yes you are right.”_

How could have he been so thick? It was obvious, even then, that he would follow her everywhere, from a free fall from a plane to the bottom of the ocean.

Wait a minute, what is that sound? Is that Jemma… _crying?_ He opens his eyes then, and really, she is trying to hide her eyes behind her wrist, but he has seen her crying enough to recognise that small sounds and the tempo of her breathing anytime.

“Jemma? What is-”

“Was it really necessary for the _bloody cosmos_ to remind me that this is all my fault? I’m sorry, Fitz, I’m _so_ sorry that I dragged you to that flying circus, that now has become this sinking circus! You deserved better, you deserved _everything_ and I-”

Does she like to be touched when she is upset? He can’t remember, because his need to feel her skin under his fingertips is so urgent now that he can’t think of anything else. He moves her arm apart from her face and puts the palm of his unharmed hand on her cheek, and they have never done something so intimate before, but, well, maybe they haven’t shared such an important moment yet. Her eyes are red and puffy and he doesn’t have time to think about how nervous this small distance makes him, because she is everything that matters, and they are dying, and he would do anything to put one last smile on her face.    

“Jemma, we just saw how I agreed to come.”

“Because you trusted my judgement! And I had no right to-”

“I wouldn’t change it for the world. So, please, don’t regret it.”

She hesitates for a moment, and there are too many emotions behind her eyes, Fitz wants to know them all and treasure them all; he knows every nook of her brain, but he doesn’t know the constellations of freckles on her cheeks when she is so close, or the way tears cling to her eyelashes.  

And then everything changes in a fraction of a second, because she kisses him, and he is so surprised that he almost- _almost_ \- breaks the kiss. To be fair, crazier things have happened in the last hour of their lives alone, but still, this might be the thing he was less likely to predict happening in his entire life. She is kissing him, and her hands are trembling but her lips are soft, and for a full second, Fitz forgets about everything, about where they are and what lead them there, about Ward’s betrayal, about the scarce oxygen, about his broken arm, about the hallucinations, and even about the other kiss that they witnessed.

(They just saw themselves kissing each other and maybe there were things they didn’t recognize as their own, but other were unmistakably them, especially the tenderness and the naturalness. Fitz refused to think about that kiss because he would probably go out of his damn mind, but now that _she is kissing him,_ one thing feeds back into the other in a increasing loop of amazingness, and Fitz feels like he is going dizzy with desire and affection and relief.)

 _“Jemma."_  He isn’t exactly sure of what he wants to say, but her name is something too big to be kept inside. “Jemma, what-”

He never finds out what he was going to ask her, because when he opens his eyes he is watching an emerald-green field, with yellow flowers and some tall trees, obviously the backyard of a house with stone walls, open windows and orange curtains. Fitz considers for a second not saying anything to Jemma, who has the window at her back, but then he sees _her_ coming out of the house, her hair grey and glasses perched on her nose, a small child holding her hand, and Fitz can’t help letting out a surprised gasp.

“What-? Oh, god, another one.”

Fitz wants to tear his eyes apart because _who cares_ about this stupid visions when Jemma Simmons just _kissed him,_  but his own older doppelganger is kissing her cheek and raising the child up in his arms, and one thing is seeing themselves kissing each other- as confusing and mesmerising as that was- and another is seeing themselves maybe forty years into the future. His hand is still half on her neck, half on her cheek, and he wonders if maybe what they are seeing is just a projection of his own inner thoughts and desires. There is nothing grand happening, and that’s exactly what makes it more appealing to look at; they haven’t known domestic and predictable and calm for a long time. But then Jemma takes a sharp breath, and Fitz looks down at her, feeling like his chest is filled up to the brim with something unexplainable, and when he looks up again, there is only water looking back at him.

“Do you think that I can, um, I mean, _we_ can be influencing this… _thing_ in any way?”

“What?” Her cheeks are pink and it makes his mouth go dry. “What do you mean?”

Jemma puts her hands on the back of her neck, her most infamous nervous tic, and Fitz is pretty sure that his heart just grow one size (scientific accuracy be damned).

“I may or may not know the place we just saw.”

“What?” Okay, that was _not_ what he was expecting at all. This thing just keeps getting weirder.

“It looks uncannily similar to a cottage we droved by during a holiday with my parents in Perthshire.” Perthsire? But that is in- “And I found it so lovely that I remembered it through all these years. I still think about it sometimes. And maybe I…” She blushes even further and looks away. Fitz, feeling bold, takes her hand between his.

“Jemma, did you think about us there?”

She bites her lower lip, but still refuses to meet his eyes.

“Maybe. I mean, a woman can’t help having ideas! Especially with how difficult is to keep a brain like mine occupied. You know how it is. And, um, and it is only understandable that I thought about you, because, um, we have been together all the time for a decade, and, well, one wonders and-”

“Jemma. Jemma.” Fitz rubs her cheekbone with his thumb to caught her attention, and waits until she is looking at him to continue. "You just kissed me.”

“I did.”

“And I kissed you back.”

“You did. What does it mat-? _Oh.”_

“Yes. Which means that I’m not gonna run for the hills because you spared a thought to us having a future together. And it’s not because there are no hills to run for.” She lets out the tiniest laugh, and he smiles.” It’s not like you _proposed,_ anyway.” She gasps, and her eyes widen and, okay, _maybe you have said too much already, Fitz._ “What I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t _have_ to mean anything.” He waits a beat, just to check that the relieved slash crestfallen look in her eyes is real. “But it can, if we want it to.”

* * *

They are sitting down on the floor, with Jemma between his legs, her back against his chest, and there are so many things Fitz wants to experience, so many things he wants to tell his mum, so much food he wants to try, so many ideas to make tangible and real, so many ways he knows he can make the world a better, safer place; but if he _has_ to go at this young age, well, he can’t imagine a better way to do it than with Jemma Simmons in his arms, his cheek against her hair, his hands just under her ribs.

(Except he would give anything, _anything,_ to get Jemma out of this, even at the expense of his own life. But they grow up together: if they can’t grow old together, it seems only fitting that they go together.)

“I did the math, and we have aready consumed two times the oxygen this pod can contain.”

“That’s odd.”

“No kidding.”

“You don’t think we are stranded in time or something, do you?”

“To be honest? I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“Okay, no, no, no, let’s check the facts.” He doesn’t care if he sounds needy, he whines the loss of her warmth when she sits on her heels facing him. “What if we are in some kind of time vortex, and the visions we are seeing are, I don’t know, our future? Because we already saw one from our past. And maybe, I don't know, I go undercover at Hydra? That can happen, you know. I could do it.”

“Jemma, are you listening to yourself? A time vortex is-”

“-highly unlikely, I know, but we should be dead, and we are not. That's a fact. And once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable-”

“- must be the truth. Your doppelganger did say something about time being a fixed dimension.”

“Yes! I can’t explain yet why the spacetime would rupture itself right here to allow us to perceive everything at once, but we should consider it. And if what we are seeing is, in fact, our future, that means that we make it out of here.”

He is trembling, and he is not sure if it’s excitement or love or fear. Probably a little bit of each.

“Do you realize that we have no way to prove this hypothesis, right?”

“Yes, I know. But if I’m wrong, we are doomed anyway, and I would appreciate it if you allow me to believe that we can have that future until the very end.”

“If this is a-, um, a time vortex, or something like that, why we don’t perceive everything at once, why are we getting just bits and pieces here and there?”

“I don’t know, maybe we are seeing things that are particularly significant? Besides making us aware that there is a future, of course. I don't believe in anything, you know that, but maybe the cosmos wants us to get out of this.” She’s getting closer to him again, and Fitz opens his arms to embrace her back, but she never makes it back into his arms. “Maybe we are supposed to get vital information from them, like we did with the Spacetime theory? Like, I don’t know, we were talking in the lab about-. Fitz. The glass. Fitz, the glass!”

She is looking open mouthed at the window, but there is no new vision out there, and he doesn’t understand what got her so surprised.

“We have been over the glass already, Jemma. The seal is too-”

She stands at the same time that she interrupts him.

“But we are in a med pod, Fitz! Which means that we have medical supplies, particularly medical ethanol, that, as I was reminding you in our vision, has a low flash point, and it burns-”

“-hotter. Oh my god, Jemma. _Oh. My. God._ If we could use the defibrillator as an ignition source-”

She is so excited she is almost jumping on the balls of her feet.

“-and build a compressed explosive-”

“-to ignite the seal, the outside pressure would blow the window in!”

He gets up too, and goes to her and kisses and kisses and kisser her, because he loves her amazing brain and he loves her everything and because thanks to her he might have a chance to tell her all that a million times over.

“Now, where do we start?”  

**Author's Note:**

> Three things:  
> 1) I feel like this fic should have a couple references to Dr Who, but I know nothing about Dr Who, so we can all agree to let it slip, yeah?  
> 2) I made Jemma kiss him here because, well, fluff for my giftee, of course, but also because I always thought that if Jemma could isolate the concept of him being in love with her from him trying to sacrifice his life for her, things would have gone very differently between them.  
> 3) I'm truly sorry about the end of this. But I'm dting a physicist and we are both hard believers that Fitz's theory in Spacetime is The Ultimate Truth: one can not change the future because time is set; we are just small plain circles in Flatland incapable to perceive time, this next, most developed dimension in its entirety. So, in order to not create a time paradox (they see a future that then doesn't happen), I was going to... erase their memories some way? So canon could keep on going the same way. That was on the original plot plan. And then I was writing that last scene and... I couldn't do something like that to them. They have been through enough already. So I let it like this so people who is more like Simmons- who think that we can, in fact, change the future- could imagine their own happy ending that I couldn't write. I'm sorry again.


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